Stretching spider silk to its high-tech limits

Chris Holland kicks a bucket of rotten fruit. "It smells like death in here," he says cheerfully as a cloud of tiny fruit flies swarms up to its fate. We're inside a glasshouse that would have any arachnophobe quaking. As many as 100 giant spiders are hanging from the ceiling, lurking on branches and lolling about on enormous webs. With their legs outstretched, they are the size of an adult's palm, their bodies the size of your thumb. Littering the webs are remnants of larger meals – the sucked-out husks of bluebottles.

The spiders are golden orb weavers and their bright yellow webs are some of the largest and most impressive of any arachnid. For researchers who study silk, like Holland at the University of Oxford, orb weavers are ideal because of their large webs and the fact that they are easy to handle. "They make great experimental subjects," says ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist